


Cobra

by piratemistress



Series: Pearls [3]
Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End (2007), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006)
Genre: Costume Parties & Masquerades, F/M, Venezia | Venice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-04-30
Updated: 2007-04-30
Packaged: 2018-04-11 23:40:56
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4456988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piratemistress/pseuds/piratemistress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Masks, jewels, serpents, royalty, music, dances, and... pirates?  Everyone has something to hide, and there's mutiny behind every masquerade... welcome to Venice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cobra

  
  
_Pearl of the cobra, sun of the Underworld, where many great serpents reside with gems on their hoods and the effulgence dissipates darkness in all directions, light our way in the dark and stormy night.  
  
_ In the emerald silk shimmer of her gown, Elizabeth saw the Caribbean waves, curious that she should still picture them among her skirts though they were half a world away. Her eyes were downcast, as she embraced every nuance of polite society that had been instilled in her; she thought she'd forgotten it, but it was still there. She carried it, as she carried the mask in her hand, her other hand upon her father's arm as they followed their companions along the Venetian street. The late February air was mild and tasted tantalizingly of spring, a spring Elizabeth desperately needed.  
  
She could not deny the thrum of excitement within her. It seemed as though she hadn't felt it in years - _don't think about Jack_ , she chided herself - but this was entirely new. Venice was not London, it was not Port Royal or anywhere else she'd been. The bridges and boats were astonishingly lovely, and upon them were all the revelers, the masked celebrants of Carnevale. The colors were vibrant and spectacular. Reds and purples and gold, not just the blue and beige of sand and sea.   
  
There was the sea, too, a foamy green-gray there at the edge of St. Mark's Square. She told herself it was a different sea. The Adriatic might connect to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic and the Caribbean, but she imagined herself apart. She looked up to see her father's wan smile, and she curled her fingers tighter around his arm. When they'd received the invitation to be the extended guests of the ambassador to Venice and his wife, longtime friends of her father's, it seemed unfeasible to travel without other reasons, but her father had been called to England on important matters, and from there it was not an absurd journey. She knew he regretted ever bringing her to Jamaica, and blamed himself for what had befallen her since. She knew he nurtured the hope that although her first marriage plan had disintegrated, she would still marry - somewhere no one had heard too much about her would be best - and he insisted she accompany him to England and then to the Italian peninsula. She could hardly have been more agreeable to the trip. There was a _world_. If she had to wear an uncomfortable dress and behave herself to see it, she would manage. She had become someone who would willingly go where life took her.  
  
And then, of course, there was the Ball.  
  
It was no accident that Governor Swann had been invited to Venice and that he had a daughter of more or less marriageable age. In fact, any governor, noble, lord, or prince in the Colonies, Caribbean or all of Europe with an unwed daughter had received an invitation to the Masquerade at the Doge's palace. It was in honor of his nephew, Luca di Asmeli, a prince of Verona, who it was rumored would marry within the year.  
  
They arrived. They were announced. And when she entered the glittering ballroom, lit with golden sconces and resonant with the animated music of the finest string orchestra in Europe, pulsing with throngs of masked elite, she told herself she'd forgotten even the word 'pirate'.  
  
In the rooms that opened off the high-ceilinged courtyard where the ball was held, lavish Turkish rugs paid homage to the city's Byzantine past, and Elizabeth sighed at the beauty of Oriental silk-wrapped settees and elegant paintings upon the walls. The paintings were alive with hues she was sure she'd never seen, and she, too, began to feel iridescent. Luminous. She and her father strolled through dozens of sumptuous rooms, which were not lined up neatly along a corridor, but spiraled together so that one was pulled deeper and deeper into the exquisite beauty. Each room had at least two doors, one to enter and one to exit, along a seemingly endless string, and she felt as though she could be leaving behind her past, the shadow she detected at the edge of her vision, the wisp of black cloth she saw disappearing around corners.  
  
The dancing began. Refined, at first, to slow, ornate melodies on the violin and viola, the harpsichord played delicately underneath. Elizabeth was grateful to simply dance and not converse - the men soon figured out she didn't know any Venetian Italian, like many of the other foreign women present - but they were more than happy to guide her around the floor. It was a different party from the ones she'd attended in England - the masks lent an aura of anonymity to such an esteemed gathering, and Carnevale was always on the edge of propriety, risks and recklessness only adding to the spectacle.   
  
She held the slim rod of her mask with her hand, keeping it over the top half her face as the other women did. It was black and decorated with gold lines, a large amber stone in the center, above the bridge of the nose. “ _Serpente_ ,” whispered one of the masked men she danced with, and when she shook her head, uncomprehending, his tongue flicked out from the mouth-hole to wag at her in an imitation hiss. Oh, yes - a snake. The mask was supposed to look like a cobra. She laughed, until she realized it amused her mostly because it was something Jack would do, and the laughter died on her lips. _I will not think about Jack Sparrow_ , she reminded herself. _That is over. Finished_.  
  
When the dance ended, she curtsied deferentially, but did dare to raise her eyes and look directly at the man she'd danced with, taking in his black cape and simple costume topped with an elaborate red and black harlequin mask. Dark eyes were looking back at her, too, as he bowed. She was soon pulled away by a hand at her elbow - it was the ambassador's wife, Lady Warwick.  
  
“I've gotten you a private introduction to the _principe_ ,” she hissed at Elizabeth, nearly dragging her along the floor. “Come along.”  
  
Elizabeth followed - as if she had much choice, being forcibly pulled - and under the terrace of the balcony above, at the far end of the room, stood her father, another masked man who wore a wig -the Duke, she supposed - and a tall man in an elegant blue costume whose age she couldn't determine through his mask. Then he removed it.  
  
Introductions were made, but Elizabeth was staring fixedly at the tall man's face as he inclined himself regally in her direction. Her breath caught - he was very handsome, with inky hair and high cheekbones. She dipped into a curtsy, thinking, _finally - a man handsome enough to make me forget Jack_. She was so eager to be hopeful and to believe that she _could_ forget Jack, that she also forgot there was a time she believed Will the handsomer of the two.  
  
Another dance ended, and the dancers applauded, the virtuoso and string players nodding in gratitude. Another tune began, and Luca smiled a dazzling smile, extending his hand to her in an offer that transcended language. He led her to the floor and they began the steps - she'd picked up many of the dances popular in Europe over the past few weeks - and when his hand reached her side to turn her gently in an arc, she nearly sighed.  
  
Jack Sparrow could hang. She was dancing with a prince.  
  
Even if Verona was half the size of Port Royal, she reminded herself, it was the principle of the thing. And he was certainly princely. Her cobra mask was no accident, but chosen for her by Lady Warwick with the prince in mind. It was said he had a special fascination with snakes of all kinds, and was said to possess a prohibitively expensive jewel: a cobra pearl, a mysterious gem taken from the hood of a snake that was said to glow in the dark. Rumors circulated that he had brought it with him to Venice to show the Duke, and that it was somewhere within the palace walls that very evening.   
  
“ _Bella maschera, signorina Elisabetta_ ,” he said to her as they turned, brushing the side of her mask with his thumb. He'd been well-educated in Florence and she was fairly sure he knew a few words of English, and sure enough, he amended, “Beautiful... mask,” in a charming accent, with an equally charming smile.   
  
“ _Grazie_ , _signore_ ,” Elizabeth replied with two of the few words she'd picked up. The music was drawing to a close, and she was actually disappointed, for though everything was strange and surreal in the swirl of colors and sounds, she was beginning to like it.   
  
He bowed low over her hand and escorted her to the side, before smiling at her again and turning away to accept the hand of a dazzling French beauty she had seen earlier. She stood next to a pillar, peering through her mask at the whirling couple, before becoming frustrated with it and holding it well aside for a better view. She was trying to tell if he were flirting with the other girl as he'd been flirting with her, when she caught a whiff of something burning. She glanced up to see she'd been holding her mask too close to a sconce upon the pillar, and the edge had caught aflame.  
  
With a horrified gasp she brought it down to her mouth and blew upon it frantically, then tried waving it back and forth rapidly, only to see the flame inch closer to the eye hole, eagerly consuming some gold trim and paint. She stared at it in mute disbelief, certain she would die of embarrassment if she didn't burn down the entire _palazzo ducale_ and perish in that, first.  
  
All of a sudden a black shape appeared and enveloped the mask within it, and she realized someone had reached out from behind a cape and grasped the mask inside the fabric. Just as quickly, the extinguished mask was handed to her by the mysterious black-swathed hands, and then she heard a voice whisper, “Still teaching the torches to burn bright, I see.”  
  
She closed her eyes. She was imagining those words, that voice. Neither belonged here.  
  
“Safer to open your eyes, love, since it seems not watching is how you set the thing ablaze in the first place, innit?”  
  
It couldn't be. It just couldn't.   
  
Could it?  
  
She opened her eyes wide to see the masked man from earlier, the one in the black cape and red and black harlequin mask, and her stomach did a somersault. “You,” she breathed. “How... how did you get here?”  
  
“Sailed, rowed, walked, in that order - same as you, I'd imagine?”  
  
“I meant, what are you _doing_ here... I can't imagine... how you got in, how you found me...”  
  
A snort came from the vicinity of the mask. “I got in by saying I was Giacomo Casanova - heard of him? For all I know, he could _be_ here. But how typical of you, to assume that I came here looking for you.”  
  
“Quite a large coincidence, otherwise. The winds of fate just _blew_ you all the way to Italy?”  
  
“Perhaps. Shall I explain during a dance, so that no one runs back to dear Prince Smelly-“  
  
“-Asmeli!”  
  
“-whatever, and says you've been talking alone with a mysterious man in the shadows?”  
  
She paused, considering. “You can _dance_?”  
  
One black-gloved finger jabbed at his sternum. “Only takes two legs, two eyes, one can pick it up by wits.”  
  
“Have you only two of those, as well?” she said with a raised brow as he reached for her hand, pulling her toward him. When the music began anew, he steered her gracefully out among the other couples.   
  
She had never danced with him, she realized, not that she ever expected to. He moved gracefully, faking the steps he didn't know well enough to keep their momentum, and she felt a nervous pressure begin to work its way up from below her ribs, telling her to be wary of his closeness. “All right, Jack,” she said when she was sure she could speak normally. “Why don't you explain what on earth you're doing here?” She couldn't help feeling it was very dangerous to be in his arms again, no matter how natural it seemed.  
  
“Heard about the cobra pearl? Course you have, since you're so interested in the prince.”  
  
She let that sink in for a moment, and then turned horrified eyes on him. “You're going to steal it?”   
  
“Incorrect. I'm going to steal it _back_ ,” he said sincerely, looking behind him through the mask to negotiate a turn.   
  
“Jack, _no_ ,” she breathed, feeling suddenly dizzy as he spun her in a slow turn. “This is beyond even you. If you're caught, no nice neat hanging, here... you shall rot in the dungeons until you die.”  
  
“Your concern is most touching,” he said in a tone that dripped sarcasm. “'Spose I shouldn't get caught, then.”  
  
“What do you want it for?”  
  
“I don't.”  
  
“You... what?”  
  
“The man who _does_ \- want it, that is - is a wealthy bloke from Calcutta I traded with years ago. As it happens it was stolen from his personal collection. It's no trinket, Elizabeth, even though it's the same size as this tiny one in your mask, same color, too. Do you know what it's supposed to do?”  
  
“If I say no, you'll probably fabricate something,” Elizabeth said dryly.  
  
“No fabrication, this. Besides its effulgence - I'm assuming you know it glows? - it's got power, Elizabeth, fantastic power that he wants. It's supposed to make its possessor invincible to disease, armies, evil, everything. But it's also sacred, and supposed to be brought into the house of its owner in a special rite, of which I'm certain your prince knows nothing, or cares nothing about. All hell is said to break loose, weather-wise, when the priests carry it in. And when's the last time you saw it monsoon around here?”  
  
“Perhaps it only monsooned over in Verona,” she offered, avoiding his eyes while she thought over his explanation. “Am I to believe you're taking it back in order to _right_ a wrong?”  
  
“Right. For the right price, of course.”  
  
“Of course.”  
  
“I knew you'd understand,” he said in a smoothing, oozing voice, seeping into her mind and memory, stirring things she wanted to keep silent and layered at the bottom. “A dress the color of the turquoise sea, a jewel here amid all these gentrified rocks... come now, Elizabeth... you don't belong here any more than I do.”  
  
The dance ended and they moved aside, once again by the pillar where she'd had the unfortunate meeting with the sconce. She faced him, needing to put distance between them to counter the heady effect of being in his embrace, even for a few minutes. “I suppose it's farewell again, Jack... good luck in your endeavor, and on your way to the dungeons, take a good long look from the Bridge of Sighs. You might see me riding in the prince's boat.”  
  
He caught her arm as she turned to go. “Don't you think it means anything that we've met here, again? By merest chance?”  
  
“Yes. It means they ought to check under the masks more carefully at the door.” She began to walk away.  
  
He was beside her in a stride or two as she wove her way between masked partygoers and servants. “What d'you say, one last adventure for old times' sake? Little bit of... excitement?”  
  
“There are many things here more exciting than our... _trysts_ ,” she whispered harshly. “Goodbye.”  
  
“Meant the theft,” Jack said, and she caught a glint of a gold grin from behind the mouth-hole of his mask. “But I'm open to the other, as well.”  
  
“Well, I'm _not_. Not anymore.”  
  
“I'd have you wide open to it before two minutes had passed. Less.”  
  
The softly spoken words seemed to sink into her, scaring her and thrilling her at the same time. She whirled to draw up close, his mask eerily unchanged, but she saw the narrowing of his eyes through it. “I've danced with a prince tonight. What use have I for you?” she said seductively, lifting her chin almost to graze his.  
  
“I'm a better _dancer_ than he is, for your money, and you know it,” he nearly growled back, reaching for her. But she eluded his grasp and put a few feet of distance between them.  
  
“Goodbye, Jack. Perhaps we shall meet again, if my streak of poor luck persists,” she said, turning to go.  
  
“Elizabeth,” he called after her receding back, causing the heads of a few partygoers to turn. “He's a collector. You'd just be another pretty jewel he acquired.”  
  
She turned only her head back, so that her chin met her bare shoulder. She glanced at him from beneath lowered eyelids. “That's all I am to you, too,” she said softly, and slipped away into the crowd.  
  
* * *  
  
Half an hour later, she had found her way to the deserted balcony wrapping around the courtyard where the ball was held, and was taking in the sight while telling herself to breathe, trying to quell the roiling emotions within her. A single hesitant, birdlike violin crooned piteously below, and its sadness touched her as she looked at her mask, touched the cobra's pearl with her fingertip. She was loath to admit it, but Jack was right - she didn't belong here, either. She wondered which was the mask and which was the real Elizabeth, or if she were both, alternately, a creature that could change itself at will.  
  
Suddenly, a warm hand closed around her wrist, and she was snatched forcefully backward from the stone railing, as the music erupted into an orgiastic frenzy, a tempest swirling every instrument up and down the scale, as though sheets of rain swirled in every direction and claps of thunder were striking here, now, inside the palace.  
  
A floor below, Warwick approached Governor Swann as he took a shrimp canapé from a gold platter borne by a fleet-footed servant.   
  
“Weatherby!” Warwick said cheerfully. “Where's your daughter? Quite exciting news, the Prince would like to dance with her again.”  
  
“Hm, I don't know,” Governor Swann said, after chewing and swallowing. “She was dancing just few moments ago... pity, too, she's missing this _exquisite_ food.”  
  
Elizabeth was kissing Jack hungrily, her hands on either side of his face, his hood falling back, his mask resting atop his head. Their mouths were crushed together repeatedly, lips sliding inside and out and heads bobbing on one side, and then the other; anyone watching would have thought it a prelude to cannibalism rather than passion. Elizabeth hoped no one was watching, but the shameful truth was that she hardly cared...  
  
Soon her spine was sliding up and down against a pillar in the shadows, her head thrown back, mouth open as he sank his teeth into the delicate skin of her neck and shoulder, and it occurred to her that he would leave marks on her as he ground his hips against her thigh, letting her feel how hard he was, so hard it should have hurt, but instead, feeling how badly he wanted her only fanned the flames.   
  
  
“Where can this girl have gotten to?” said Warwick to the governor. “The prince's request is not one to be taken lightly. You haven't seen her?”  
  
“She has a peculiar habit of disappearing,” _with pirates_ , Governor Swann elected not to add.  
  
“Such a lovely girl - I do hope someone hasn't carried her off,” Warwick replied, and gave a dry bleating laugh that Governor Swann immediately sought to match.  
  
Jack carried Elizabeth off into a darkened suite of rooms, kicking open a door or two that dared to block his way, half-stumbling as he did so, for she was clinging to his hair and neck and dragging her mouth along his jaw, running her tongue among the bristles of his beard. He then dropped her - not gently, not tenderly, but more or less accurately - upon a damask-swathed settee, and wasted no time in dropping himself on top.  
  
She was clawing at the strings of his cloak, and he caught her hands and pushed them downward, rasping, “No time... never mind that.”  
  
The music from below was building to a driving rhythm, the basses, cellos and harpsichord weaving in and out of the melody, while Jack's hand found its way beneath one skirt after another, all the while he was pressing the flat of his tongue to the valley between her breasts, no doubt feeling her heart pulse and her breath come in desperate, deep pants.  
  
“I don't know where she could have gone,” Governor Swann said as innocently as possible, searching the teeming ballroom with his eyes, as though he make her materialize by will alone. He had more reason to fear she'd gotten into trouble than those who didn't know her tendencies toward it.  
  
“Perhaps we should send someone to look for her?” Warwick said, spotting his wife a few feet away. “Check above, in case she's wandered off?”  
  
“Give it a few moments before we sound any undue alarms,” her father replied.  
  
  
Elizabeth yelled, a guttural sound of agonized pleasure, when Jack drove himself into her, hard and fast. Her skirts were shoved in disarray around her waist, and Jack flattened a hand over her mouth, saying on a ragged breath, “Not so loud... unless you _want_ the entire palace to know you're being bedded on the duke's... fancy... furniture...?”  
  
Her answering moan made him grin, knowing that the thought of being caught was half the fun, and his naughty talk was half of the other half. He thrust into her so hard she nearly slid off the other end of the settee, which he knew she loved because her fingers tightened around his arm and she slid her tongue over the palm he still held over her lips, and then it was his turn to groan.  
  
“What could she be doing?” muttered Warwick, catching his wife by the elbow as she passed. “Have a look upstairs, won't you, darling, for Elizabeth?”  
  
“If I find her, what shall I say to her?” Lady Warwick asked.  
  
“Why, tell her to come _at once_.”  
  
  
  
Elizabeth was coming, Jack knew, from the particular cadence of her gasps into his ear. He'd heard it before.  
  
“Again, eh?” Jack smiled around gritted teeth, proud of how he'd released the wanton inside the prim miss she once was. Another scream that he swallowed in his kiss. More, faster, harder; she responded with gasps and murmurs in his ears, taunting him purposefully as only a many-times lover would know how and permit herself to do, coaxing him rapidly to a fever pitch.  
  
The music was building to a frantic, rolling crescendo, with all instruments being played at frenetic speeds, the violin virtuosos bowing furiously while the deeper sounds rolled and flowed together into a rich, swelling storm. Jack was so lost in the sounds of that and the feel of Elizabeth around him and beneath him that he almost forgot that despite everything he still didn't want to impregnate her, and at the last possible second of sanity he withdrew. In the next moment he looked down to see with equal parts surprise and fascination that he had quite thoroughly ruined the silk upholstery.  
  
* * *  
  
Later, Jack guarded the door while she re-pinned her hair, making use of an ornately framed mirror on the wall. “Elizabeth, while we're friendly again - what about helping out dear ol' Jack?”  
  
“With?” she said, noticing there were red and purple blotches developing in an unseemly trail down her neck to her breasts. Her eyes were wide as she followed the path with her fingertips, trying to think of what explanation she could give that didn't involved being mauled by a wild animal.  
  
“This small matter of the cobra pearl,” Jack replied. “And leave your hair down to cover it - there's no hope of explaining that away,” he added, sounding a little too proud, it seemed to Elizabeth.  
  
“Now I'm to be your accomplice?” she mused in reply, removing the back half of the pins from her hair so that it fell in waves around her shoulders.  
  
“You don't have to steal, only walk, and talk, two things which - I assure you - you can do _very_ well.”  
  
She considered his offer, realizing there was risk, danger, everything she'd sought to avoid and leave behind in the follies of her youth. Together with him. That didn't seem to be working out as she'd planned, and she couldn't deny that spark of exhilaration that sprang to life when she thought about being the right-hand man - woman? - of Captain Jack Sparrow.   
  
On the other hand, steal a valuable artifact from the very prince she seemed to have a chance at marrying? She'd be an utter fool to help Jack at that price. A complete, total fool. Jack Sparrow was just an adventure to whom she owed no loyalty whatsoever... and a dangerous one, at that. Being caught would be worse than a death sentence. The Doge's dungeons were lovely, dark and deep.  
  
And wouldn't she be a valuable guest indeed, if she were to alert the Prince there was a thief in the palace?  
  
In another moment she had made her decision. “I have to return downstairs, I've been gone almost an hour,” she said, smoothing her dress.  
  
He meandered toward her, catching her mysterious gaze in the mirror. “Then meet me,” he said, still seductive although their rendezvous had ended. “Allow three or four dances to pass before you slip away, then meet me by that large vase - down the hall from the entrance to the private quarters, you've seen it? - You'll simply pretend to the guard that you're lost, and I'll slip inside while he's distracted.”  
  
She regarded him with skeptically raised brows. “Does that ever work?”  
  
He smiled wolfishly. “All the time.”  
  
  
* * *  
  
Jack watched surreptitiously from beside a pillar above as Elizabeth was escorted to dance once again. With the prince, he saw, his lip curling in disgust. As if the sodding prince could ever understand how Elizabeth liked to be handled.   
  
He'd never really felt jealous of Will, even though she'd been much closer to marrying the whelp and even loved him, to boot, so it irked him that he was so annoyed by the Italian's fine looks and sweeping grace on the floor. That he'd never really felt jealous over any woman, but the mere sight of the prince's elegant, long-fingered hand on Elizabeth's sea-green side made him want to run him through with the rustiest blade he could find. No, he'd like to watch him drown... or...  
  
He was so absorbed with murderous fantasies that he almost didn't notice when the prince suddenly bowed and took his leave of Elizabeth, and she turned her masked face in Jack's direction, as though looking for him. _Well, don't give me away, you silly bint_ , he thought, drawing deeper into the shadows.  
  
Less than a minute later, he heard the tap of shoes on the stone floor nearby. Two pairs.  
  
“ _Voi, chi siete_?” demanded a voice, and Jack, adjusting his mask, tried to edge around the pillar. A sound of steel, and an extended sword was blocking his path. He looked up to see two of the Duke's guards. “ _Cosa fate qui? Chi siete?_ ”  
  
One approached him authoritatively. “ _E allora? Chi siete?_ ”  
  
“Er... Giacomo... Casanova,” Jack said, guessing they were asking who he was.  
  
The guard reached forward and snatched the mask from Jack's face. The young man looked him up and down, then narrowed his eyes with a rather evil smile. Jack was uncomfortably reminded of James Norrington. “ _Voi non siete Signor Casanova,_ ” the young guard announced. _You're not Mr. Casanova.  
  
_ “Not _yet_ ,” Jack said with a wink, scanning possible routes of escape behind them, “but hope springs eternal. Eh?”  
  
The guards blinked at him. Probably they didn't speak English, which didn't bode well for talking his way out of this one. Then across the courtyard, in the shadows, he caught a glimpse of a blue robe. The prince's.   
  
Until then he'd thought it likely the guards had stumbled on him by accident... but then he saw in his mind Elizabeth dancing... whispering something to the prince... his bow and sudden departure. Jack rapidly concluded, not surprisingly, that he may have been given up.  
  
In fact... he was sure of it.  
  
_Bitch_ , he thought, as the guards roughly grabbed his elbows and hauled him forward, dragging him past where the prince stood in the shadow of the porticoes. “ _Tutto bene_?” called the prince to the guards.  
  
“ _Sì, signore,”_ one called back, continuing to push Jack along the floor. “ _Dove lo portiamo, signore?_ ”  
  
He's asking where to take me, Jack realized with rising panic.  
  
“ _Giù_ ,” was all the prince said, and then turned on his heel, in a circle of royal blue fabric, and disappeared into the shadows.  
  
“Giù,” Jack surmised, was “down.” Which was never good.  
  
As soon as the prince was out of sight, Jack feigned a fall, and stumbled to his knees. When two arms reached for him, one from either guard, he leapt up, pulling on the arms to knock the guards against one another - and in the next instant, he was off and running down the stone corridor.  
  
It didn't help that he really didn't know his way around the palace, but he careened around the nearest corner, ignoring the shouts from behind him. He was leery of entering any room with a door, for while it might have a door at the other side - it might not, and then he'd be trapped. But he had to lose the two guards somewhere.  
  
After three long corridors, a staircase and turns that seemed to be taking him deeper into the palace rather than closer to getting out, he realized the two guards were getting closer. He saw a door up ahead on his right, and thought if he could cut through... if it were a series of connected rooms he could double back, find a way to escape...   
  
“ _Fermate_!” shouted one of the guards, but Jack had no intention of stopping. He had no desire to spend the rest of his life in the elaborate prisons beneath them. He decided on the door.  
  
He threw it open and dashed inside, hoping he wouldn't topple over furniture in the darkness. It seemed to be a _studiolo_ \- books lined the walls and wood paneling surrounded them. It was then he realized there was no other door.  
  
He was trapped. The guards entered behind him. He turned around, examining every corner of the room. There was no other door.  
  
But there _was_ a window.  
  
He ran to it, knocking open the shutters hastily. Below - two or three stories below - was the canal, murky and uncertain in the darkness. _Really not good_ , he thought even as he clambered onto the stone sill.  
  
He took one last look behind him at the guards. One was shouting and pointing - the other had his sword drawn and wore a menacing expression.  
  
Only one thing to do. With a mock tipping of his hat toward the guards, Jack leaned back and fell out the window.  
  
“ _Idiota_!” he heard one of them shout as he toppled down.  
  
Jack plummeted toward the water for only a few seconds, but it was enough for a sense of dejà-vu. This fear of falling, the long plunge toward a watery end, was something that stirred old emotions he thought he'd left buried... he was falling from the plank, and Barbossa was laughing, and even the men he'd thought loyal watched, wide-eyed. Bootstrap was there, too. And it wasn't the fall so much as the betrayal that wrenched his stomach.   
  
He hit the fetid water with all the force of a cannon blast.   
  
  
* * *  
  
Elizabeth stood in front of a hanging mirror in her guest room in the Warwicks' house in Venice, removing the pins from her hair with the shaking fingers of her left hand. She still could not believe she'd gone through with what she'd done that night. She replayed scenarios in her head - ones where she got caught, ones where she still might get caught.  
  
It was dark except for a single candle on her night table, and she wore her nightgown and wrapper, having been helped out of her gown by Lady Warwick's maid. The bruises around her neck and shoulders became visible, and she drew a fingertip across them, hoping against hope that Jack would be all right. Her right hand had been clenched into a white-knuckled fist ever since she'd gotten home.  
  
Suddenly she was yanked backward by the hair, against a hard body - and the shock of someone in her room was heightened to terror by the press of steel at her throat.  
  
“I ought to give you a real taste of pain to match those,” Jack growled in her ear, snaking another arm around her middle to press her against him.  
  
Ironically, relief flooded through her when she realized it was only Jack, and that he seemed to be whole - though he was damp and smelled of the canals. His words hadn't registered, only his voice and closeness. “Thank goodness,” she breathed, leaning her head back against his moist shoulder. “I was so afraid they'd -“  
  
The tip of the knife poking deeper into her jugular made her draw in her breath.  
  
“You're going to listen,” he rasped, and the coldness of his voice - as cold as the knife blade - sent a chill through her that had nothing to do with the February evening or the water soaking from his clothes into her nightdress. Her eyes opened wide and she looked at his fierce expression in the mirror, startled into silence as he spoke.   
  
“Life's all about learning from one's mistakes, you see. I learned a good lesson from betrayal in the past that I'm going to share with you, darling - so listen well. All those years ago - before the mutiny on the _Pearl -_ I sensed something coming, something... changing, and I tried to make nice to avoid it. Extra rations of this and that, other courtesies toward the men I suspected were untrusting, unhappy. And I let myself be persuaded by my trusty first mate into revealing the location of the treasure, only one day before they mutinied. So the lesson is: never play nice when there's treasure involved.” He dragged the flat of the blade along her pale neck. “And I'm through playing nice.”  
  
“Jack - “ she said, her breath short, her throat tight.  
  
He responded with a hard tug on her hair that raised her chin and stretching her neck further, making it hard for her to breathe. “I'm not finished,” he said in the same bitter, steely voice. “I forgave you. Long ago. I knew what you were like, and I walked right into it. Maybe I even deserved it, and we settled that, you and I, given what happened after. And I don't believe in staying angry at anyone, really, because if you let someone anger you, they control you, you see? But I've realized something, thinking about tonight as I swam for my life. Your mask suited you perfectly. You're not the woman temptress.” He paused, giving a quick, bitter nod upward to emphasize his verdict: “You're the serpent.”  
  
As he continued, she raised her right fist slowly to the level of his eyes as they glowed white and dark, pearl and obsidian.  
  
“I understand how it is. I scratched your itch, and I'd scorned you before, so it's just like the saying: Hell hath no fury, eh? Killing me was only the first indication of the lengths you'd go to... tell me, was it more satisfying to send me to hell, or condemn me to hell on Earth, just to revenge yourself on me and raise your chances vis-a-vis the other girls?”  
  
She uncurled the fingers of her hand, slow and graceful as an eclipse, revealing what she had clenched in her fist. In the mirror she saw his eyes narrow as his gaze fell upon what was in her palm. An amber stone.  
  
The cobra pearl.  
  
In a flash he had turned her to face him, and backed her toward the nightstand, still holding the dagger to her throat. He leaned over to extinguish the candle with a puff.   
  
The pearl glowed, or rather seemed to emit its own orange light, a strange and unearthly gleam. Jack stared at it with wide eyes for a moment, before turning his eyes back to Elizabeth. He lowered the dagger.  
  
“Now how did you get _that_?” he said slowly, raising a single black brow, barely visible in the near-dark.  
  
“I stole it. I thought if you'd been captured, I'd... need something to bargain with.”  
  
“Bargain, eh? Had second thoughts about throwing me to the wolves, er... snakes?”  
  
“I don't know what you're talking about. You think _I_ gave you up? What happened to you? I waited by the vase for nearly a half an hour before I assumed they'd gotten you.”  
  
“I was seized by the guards. Coincidentally - “ his eyes flicked over her face uncertainly - “ just after I saw you chatting with Smelly.”  
  
So he thought she'd betrayed him. How like him. “How... how did you get away?” she whispered.  
  
“Went out a window. Into the canal. I have to say, I prefer Caribbean waters.” He paused, looking at the still-effulgent pearl. “How- I mean actually, how - did you manage to get hold of that?”  
  
She closed her palm suddenly, snatching the pearl away. She pushed past him, putting a few feet of distance between them, enough space to think. His belief that she'd betrayed him rankled, and she felt herself growing angrier by the second, looking for a way to repay him in kind.  
  
“Well?” he said, approaching behind her.  
  
She turned and spread a sweet, seductive smile across her face. “I asked the prince if I might see it, he brought me to his private quarters with no one the wiser, and then I employed the _friendliest_ of distractions in order to steal it. On my knees, as a matter of fact. Your lessons in that respect were _most_ useful.” She walked slowly up to him, still smiling the mysterious smile. She brushed a thumb across his damp cheek, and it was as cold and clammy as her voice. “Aren't you proud of me?”  
  
She felt him freeze, knew she'd successfully pitted his anger and jealousy against one another, in a match that was certain to tie him in knots. “Well, I _am_ surprised,” he said bitterly, his eyes glittering. “Good thing you could use your mouth, since your quim was already worn out. If you ever tire of shopping for husbands, you'd make a good - ”  
  
She slapped him, right across the face, before she even realized she'd lifted her hand. He opened his eyes to glare at her, the sting leaving a red splotch on his cheek, while she tried to get control of her breath. No matter how deeply she gasped, she couldn't seem to draw enough air.  
  
“Not fair to slap me when I'm only speaking the truth,” he said in an ominous whisper.  
  
“You wouldn't know the _truth_ from a hole in the ground!” she nearly yelled, until he rushed forward to put a hand over her mouth, seeming to realize finally that he had a furious woman on his hands who was capable of screaming down the house.   
  
She flung his hand aside but lowered her voice to hiss at him, “You're an even bigger idiot than you seem. I never touched him! Honestly, you really believed I first turned you in and then...” Words failed her to even describe the act she'd had little experience with. “...You're a fool. I made moon-eyes at him while he talked, and switched it out with the glass bead from my mask when he wasn't looking. And at no small risk to myself.”  
  
There was a pause while he frowned, two deep half-moons appearing between his brows. “So... there wasn't any... oral persuasion?” His expression changed. Softened. His voice, too, as he began, “Elizabeth, darling - “  
  
“Don't you 'Elizabeth' me! Even after everything, you're so eager to believe me a strumpet and a... traitor?”  
  
He held up a hand, fingers outstretched as though to soothe her. “Just a moment... this is all a misunderstanding.”  
  
“Oh, it certainly is. As opposed to any 'understanding' we may ever have had. Jack - take the bloody pearl and get out of my room.”  
  
He did reach out and take the cobra pearl, then, while she breathed, still seething. He held it in his fingers, examining it, no doubt stalling for time. “Amazing that you got it. Prabhakar's going to be thrilled - and the rewards will be substantial.” He looked up at Elizabeth. “We could live a long time on what he's going to pay me for it.”  
  
“ _We_?” She expelled the word like an unwanted olive pit.  
  
“Aye, we.” Jack tilted his head as he looked at her. “It's the perfect opportunity to escape, y'know. Out the window, down the trellis to the little boat I pinched. Not far to the ship.”  
  
She took a step toward him. “Why would I even consider running off with a man who sneaks into my room to hold a dagger to my throat and accuse me of betraying him?”  
  
He held up a finger as though it were a weapon to defend himself. “In the first place, you enjoy it when I sneak into your room. To the second, 'pirate'. And to the third...”  
  
“To the third, you're a _coward_ , Jack Sparrow. Even after I've saved your life a few times, you'd rather believe the worst of me than trust me... because if you let yourself, what would happen then?”  
  
“A true pirate never trusts beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said with a beguiling smile, reaching out to stroke her cheek with a finger. She turned her face away.  
  
“Then a true pirate never loves, either,” she murmured, giving him her back as she crossed the room to the window. She pushed open the shutters. “Goodbye, Jack.”  
  
He looked at her, with a puppy-eyed disappointment she was sure was feigned to elicit her sympathy. “You're not coming, then?”  
  
She glared at him, pressing her lips together before saying, “Do me the kindness of staying well out of my life, from now on. It can't be so hard - it's a big world, isn't it?”  
  
“Aye, that it is,” he said, coming to stand in front of her. He looked her up and down quickly, and she was sure he was considering kissing her goodbye. He didn't, though, and walked over to the window, instead. “It's farewell, again?”  
  
“Again, for the thousandth - and hopefully final - time.”  
  
“We'll see about that, won't we?” He tapped his dagger playfully on her bare shoulder before swinging his legs over the sill to catch a ledge underneath. He turned around while balancing on the ledge with his toes as she approached the window from inside. “A kiss goodnight, since parting is such sweet sorrow, and all?”  
  
“Don't break your neck on the way down - it would make a ghastly mess on the sidewalk. _Arrivederci_ ,” she said, closing the shutters in front of her, like shadows passing rapidly over the sun.  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> (original 2007 A/N): Thank you very much to lady_di75 for the thorough beta-read and helpful suggestions for improvement. This is a very special chapter for me because it allowed me to combine several of my loves on this earth - writing, romance, Italian, music, (sex?)...- into one piece. It was inspired partly by Vivaldi, whose music I absolute adore. He was a Venetian composer from this period - early 1700s - and would likely have been writing and performing as a virtuoso violinist at this time (that might be him taking his bows in the fic).
> 
> I love Venice, everything I’ve written here is a reflection of my own experiences there - not that I’ve, um, dallied with Jack Sparrow on a settee or anything - and if you’d like to hear what I hear, particularly in the middle section of the chapter with the violin and the “storm,” listen to the first movement of the “Summer” section of The Four Seasons. It’s wonderfully passionate, forming a sort of ‘score’ for the scene. I’ve posted it on YouSendIt, here. Also, just for fun, my roll-credits music: ZZ Top’s “Pearl Necklace.” Look up the lyrics if you want the dirty laughs. If the links expire after 7 days, comment if you want the file and I’ll re-post.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who’s been so supportive so far. Hard at work on the next. Love, Lady P


End file.
